I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather for various reasons (hence the much less regular posting – sorry), but I’m finally managing to get back gradually to real food and wine. The other night J decided to break out one of our new cookbooks, Street Food by Tom Kime, and make Turkish lamb meatballs with sour cherry sauce, called kebab b’il karaz.

We had ground lamb in the freezer and plenty of dried tart cherries on hand, but we did not have any pomegranate molasses, which forms the basis of the sauce. After calling around to local specialty stores, none of whom had even heard of pomegranate molasses, J decided to make his own by boiling down pomegranate juice into syrup. It worked great!

The original recipe suggested serving the kebabs as one of many dishes, with lots of flatbread. J made chapatis, and we put the hot meatballs and sauce on a bed of fresh spinach, which went beautifully with the cherry sauce. The flavor is very rich, dark, sweet and spicy, so it’s good to have something to contrast. Couscous would be good, too.

Kebab b’il karaz (lamb meatballs in sour cherry sauce)

for the sauce:

• 3/4 cup dried sour cherries
• 1 Tbsp sugar
• 1 Tbsp pomegranate molasses
• 1 cup water
• juice of 1 lemon 

for the meatballs:

• 1 lb ground lamb
• 1 clove garlic, pressed
• red chile flakes to taste
• 2 tsp ground coriander
• pinch of salt
• olive oil
• 1/2 bunch fresh parsley
• black pepper

Mix the pomegranate molasses, sugar, water and cherries in a pan and simmer until the mixture is syrupy. Add lemon juice to taste.

Combine the garlic, chile flakes, coriander and salt and mush together. Cook in a bit of olive oil for a couple minutes, and add it all to the ground lamb along with the parsley. Mix thoroughly and form into small meatballs. You can pan-fry them, but J prefers baking them in a 375° oven for 20-30 minutes.

Add the cooked meatballs to the sauce and keep it hot until ready to serve. Eat with bread and a nice bottle of Zinfandel (the Cline Old Vines we had open went splendidly).